Israel Bulldozes UNRWA East Jerusalem Compound, U.N. Calls It an Unprecedented Breach

In the dim light just after dawn on Jan. 20, Israeli forces pushed through the gates of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s headquarters compound in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Security guards contracted by the U.N. were ordered out. Their phones and radios were taken. Moments later, bulldozers rolled into the walled compound, tearing into warehouses that for decades stored food and supplies for Palestinian refugees.

By midmorning, at least one large structure inside the compound lay in rubble, an Israeli flag flew above the site and a senior far-right minister was hailing the operation as “historic.”

The United Nations called it something else: an “unprecedented attack” on its own premises and a direct violation of international law.

The confrontation at the compound — long UNRWA’s headquarters for the West Bank and East Jerusalem — has opened a new front in Israel’s campaign against the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and raised a stark question: what happens when a U.N. member state sends in bulldozers against U.N.-marked property the organization insists is legally inviolable?

Israel cites domestic law and taxes; U.N. cites immunity

Israeli forces entered the compound shortly after 7 a.m. local time, according to UNRWA spokesman Jonathan Fowler. He said guards were removed and heavy machinery brought in to demolish buildings and internal structures.

“This is an unprecedented attack against UNRWA and its premises, and a serious violation of international law and the privileges and immunities of the United Nations,” Fowler said.

Israel describes the operation differently. Officials say the site no longer enjoys any special status because the Knesset in late 2024 passed laws banning UNRWA from operating in the country — including annexed East Jerusalem — and stripping it of its diplomatic privileges.

The Israel Land Authority, the state body that manages public land, said the compound had “reverted to state ownership” and that the demolition followed a lengthy enforcement process over what authorities say are millions of shekels in unpaid municipal property taxes. It said the area would be re-planned for public use and that the historic British Mandate-era “Police Academy” building on the site would be preserved.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a leading figure in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, publicly celebrated the move, calling it a “historic day” and portraying the demolition as both an assertion of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and a blow against “terror-supporting” infrastructure.

Israeli officials have for years accused UNRWA of enabling or tolerating militant activity, allegations the agency has rejected. After the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli authorities said some UNRWA staff took part and that facilities in Gaza concealed tunnels or hostages. Internal U.N. reviews and Western intelligence assessments later found limited corroboration for some of the most sweeping claims, but they helped drive domestic support in Israel for a legal offensive against the agency.

Under the 2024 legislation, UNRWA is barred from any activity “in the sovereign territory of the State of Israel.” A companion law blocks official Israeli contact with the agency and, according to Israeli media, designates it as a terrorist organization in domestic law. Yulia Malinovsky, the lawmaker who championed the bills, declared after their passage: “UNRWA will not operate in the territory of the State of Israel. That’s it, it’s over. UNRWA is out.”

U.N. says compound remains its property, protected in law

The United Nations rejects Israel’s claim that it can unilaterally revoke UNRWA’s status or immunity.

In a statement on Jan. 20, the spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the Sheikh Jarrah compound “remains United Nations premises, and is inviolable and immune from any form of interference.” The statement condemned the demolition “in the strongest terms” and called the action “wholly unacceptable.”

The U.N. said Israel, as a member state, is bound by Article 105 of the U.N. Charter and the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which state that U.N. premises, property and assets are immune from “search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference” by national authorities.

The compound itself sits on land leased by UNRWA from the government of Jordan since the early 1950s. It served for decades as the agency’s headquarters for operations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and housed warehouses and administrative offices. After Israel’s 2024 laws took effect and settler activists repeatedly targeted the site, UNRWA withdrew most staff in early 2025, saying it could no longer guarantee their safety. The U.N. has maintained, however, that the legal status of the compound as U.N. premises did not change.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, called the Jan. 20 operation “an unprecedented attack” and “a new level of open and deliberate defiance of international law, including of the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, by the State of Israel.”

“What happens today to UNRWA will happen tomorrow to any other international organization or diplomatic mission, anywhere around the world,” he warned.

Clash with International Court of Justice guidance

The demolition comes less than three months after the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion addressing Israel’s obligations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

In that Oct. 22, 2025, opinion, the court affirmed that East Jerusalem is part of the occupied territory and that Israel’s claim of sovereignty over the area is not recognized under international law. The court said Israel, as occupying power, is required to respect the privileges and immunities of U.N. bodies operating there and must resolve disputes over their presence through U.N. mechanisms, not unilateral measures.

While ICJ advisory opinions are not legally binding in the way court judgments are, they carry significant weight in U.N. practice. U.N. officials say the demolition flies in the face of both the court’s conclusions and Israel’s treaty commitments.

Israel has sharply criticized recent moves by the ICJ and the International Criminal Court related to its conduct in Gaza and the West Bank and has signaled it does not accept the courts’ jurisdiction in key areas.

Escalation after a year of confrontations

The Jan. 20 demolition marks the most far-reaching action yet against the Sheikh Jarrah compound, but it follows a series of confrontations.

On May 26, 2025, a group of Israelis led by a member of parliament entered the compound, raised flags and proclaimed they were “liberating” the “former UNRWA headquarters.” UNRWA said the incursion violated the “inviolability of U.N. premises” and complained that Israeli police did not intervene to protect the site.

On Dec. 8, 2025, large numbers of Israeli police and officials from the Israel Land Authority forced their way into the compound with trucks and cranes, cutting communications for U.N. guards inside, according to UNRWA. The secretary-general condemned that operation as an “unacceptable violation” and urged Israel to refrain from “any further such acts.”

This time, the U.N. says, the damage goes beyond unauthorized entry.

Photographs from international news agencies show at least one warehouse inside the perimeter collapsed into debris. UNRWA officials say the structures being razed were part of the agency’s logistics network for moving supplies into the West Bank and Gaza, at a time when U.N. agencies report acute humanitarian needs in both areas.

A symbolic site in a contested neighborhood

The compound lies in Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood just north of Jerusalem’s Old City that has become an emblem of Palestinian displacement and Israeli settlement expansion.

Originally built as a police training academy under British rule, the site was leased to UNRWA after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when the agency was created to serve hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Over the decades, the headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah came to symbolize the international community’s continuing engagement with the unresolved status of those refugees and with the Palestinian claim to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

Palestinians and U.N. officials say demolishing parts of the compound in favor of unspecified Israeli redevelopment projects sends a clear message.

For many Palestinian residents, the sight of U.N.-marked buildings reduced to rubble is another sign that international guarantees in the city carry little practical weight — whether for refugees, residents facing eviction or now the U.N. itself.

A test for the U.N.’s ability to protect its own

Diplomats and legal experts say the episode underscores the limits of the multilateral system when a government chooses to disregard its commitments.

The European Union’s foreign policy arm and several U.N. member states have urged Israel to halt further demolition and respect U.N. immunities. As of this week, Israel has given no public indication it intends to reverse course or rebuild.

With walls of the Sheikh Jarrah compound still standing but its interior scarred by demolition, the dispute now extends beyond the fate of one property. It has become a test case of whether U.N. flags and legal clauses can shield the organization’s own facilities when they stand in the way of a member state’s domestic agenda.

For now, the blue U.N. emblem still hangs on the compound’s outer gate. Behind it, the buildings that once housed an agency created in 1949 to care for refugees displaced from what is now Israel are giving way to new facts on the ground, imposed not with resolutions and opinions, but with steel tracks and hydraulic arms.